And there's the intellectual problem I can't reconcile.
Me: "Fuck off nanny state, you don't have a right to tell me what kind of gun I can own or what I can buy. I'm a fucking adult."
Also me: "Holy shit, that guy is fucking stupid. He shouldn't be allowed to own that item or do that thing because he's a danger to himself and others"
The Jeffersonian ideal of the noble yeoman farmer: a competent freethinking, self-sufficient citizen, has always been a fantasy.
Most people are nothing more than cattle with the gift of speech. They have little to no capacity for independent thought and are easily swayed by anyone with the rudimentary skills to manipulate them. Their ambitions and their abilities both confine them to toiling away it meaningless low skill jobs to acquire equally meaningless material goods.
The trick is devising the system that correctly categorizes people, where the stupid have the rights of a child their whole life because they basically are children and those with competence are unshackled from government controls that should never have applied to them in the first place.
One thing to keep in mind, before the 19th amendment ruined this country forever, the U.S. was majority republican for a huge chunk of its history because that's how people voted. Even as recently as the 80s, a republican president won in a landslide. Most hardworking Americans vote intelligently because it's thier money and lives on the line.
What honestly needs to happen, is the federal government needs to have the majority of it's power stripped and given back to the states. Then take it a step further, and only the town you live in has the most affect on your life. Localization is the key, politicians can't get away with shit when they live in your town.
The problem with this idea is that it's too easy to throw people into the inferior caste because you don't like them, and not because they genuinely belong there.
That's true. The only thing I can think of is a battery of tests that measure both your intellect and your character. Stupid=slave caste, but so would smart but evil. They would also have to be opaque enough that people couldn't figure out the "right" answers and coach their friends and relatives. Unfortunately, this idea will never be more than an intellectual exercise.
I don't doubt that it's technically possible to devise such tests, but I think in practical terms they could never be created for several reasons. First, anyone involved in building and administering the test system will taint it with their biases or attempt to use inside knowledge for their friends and family.
Second, it would require the world to acknowledge the big lie: all men are not created equal, they have various degrees of value based on their abilities and character. People are not going to tolerate having their rights and privileges adjusted to match their worth, because most would undoubtedly see a decrease in their autonomy as a result.
The last remaining shit filter for elections was the fact you had to get up off your ass to vote. You needed the drive, intelligence and motivation to do this (even if you're a NPC you needed to care enough to deal with the hassle).
Now it's a mail in ballot mailed to your house. Fraud aside, it unlocks the dumbest and most easily manipulated voter base for the left. People that wouldn't have even known an election is going on suddenly have more collective power than educated voters.
You're right. A single vote from a thoughtful person who researched the candidates and the issues and considered both their interests and the interests of the people as a whole when deciding who to vote for is outweighed by two burnout druggies who vote for the guy that says he's going to legalize narcotics. Now multiply that by millions.
Absentee ballots should be all but eliminated. Make election day they paid holiday so that no one has any excuse not to vote. The only people who should be voting remotely are military stationed out of state and people hospitalized or with disabilities that physically prevent them from getting to a polling site.
It will never happen, but I also think that you are not a net taxpayer you shouldn't be allowed to cast a vote. I don't let the guy at the office who isn't chipping in for lunch have a say on where we're buying from, so why do we let people with no stake in the matter vote on how to spend everyone else's money?
That's not hard to reconcile. A homogeneous population with limited franchise of political power, with full rights otherwise for the rest of the population. Save if course for those who can't maintain good standing in a civilized society.
Everyone can have guns, everyone can conduct commerce, etc. Only landed families and veterans can vote, because everyone else has a conflict of interest against the securement of the future of the nation.
Top this with a formalized "Bill of Wrongs", a codified list of things that are not under any circumstances to be considered a right, and you have a society that has a decent chance to avoid the pitfalls we've fallen into the past century.
And there's the intellectual problem I can't reconcile.
Me: "Fuck off nanny state, you don't have a right to tell me what kind of gun I can own or what I can buy. I'm a fucking adult."
Also me: "Holy shit, that guy is fucking stupid. He shouldn't be allowed to own that item or do that thing because he's a danger to himself and others"
The Jeffersonian ideal of the noble yeoman farmer: a competent freethinking, self-sufficient citizen, has always been a fantasy.
Most people are nothing more than cattle with the gift of speech. They have little to no capacity for independent thought and are easily swayed by anyone with the rudimentary skills to manipulate them. Their ambitions and their abilities both confine them to toiling away it meaningless low skill jobs to acquire equally meaningless material goods.
The trick is devising the system that correctly categorizes people, where the stupid have the rights of a child their whole life because they basically are children and those with competence are unshackled from government controls that should never have applied to them in the first place.
One thing to keep in mind, before the 19th amendment ruined this country forever, the U.S. was majority republican for a huge chunk of its history because that's how people voted. Even as recently as the 80s, a republican president won in a landslide. Most hardworking Americans vote intelligently because it's thier money and lives on the line.
What honestly needs to happen, is the federal government needs to have the majority of it's power stripped and given back to the states. Then take it a step further, and only the town you live in has the most affect on your life. Localization is the key, politicians can't get away with shit when they live in your town.
The problem with this idea is that it's too easy to throw people into the inferior caste because you don't like them, and not because they genuinely belong there.
That's true. The only thing I can think of is a battery of tests that measure both your intellect and your character. Stupid=slave caste, but so would smart but evil. They would also have to be opaque enough that people couldn't figure out the "right" answers and coach their friends and relatives. Unfortunately, this idea will never be more than an intellectual exercise.
I don't doubt that it's technically possible to devise such tests, but I think in practical terms they could never be created for several reasons. First, anyone involved in building and administering the test system will taint it with their biases or attempt to use inside knowledge for their friends and family.
Second, it would require the world to acknowledge the big lie: all men are not created equal, they have various degrees of value based on their abilities and character. People are not going to tolerate having their rights and privileges adjusted to match their worth, because most would undoubtedly see a decrease in their autonomy as a result.
The last remaining shit filter for elections was the fact you had to get up off your ass to vote. You needed the drive, intelligence and motivation to do this (even if you're a NPC you needed to care enough to deal with the hassle).
Now it's a mail in ballot mailed to your house. Fraud aside, it unlocks the dumbest and most easily manipulated voter base for the left. People that wouldn't have even known an election is going on suddenly have more collective power than educated voters.
You're right. A single vote from a thoughtful person who researched the candidates and the issues and considered both their interests and the interests of the people as a whole when deciding who to vote for is outweighed by two burnout druggies who vote for the guy that says he's going to legalize narcotics. Now multiply that by millions.
Absentee ballots should be all but eliminated. Make election day they paid holiday so that no one has any excuse not to vote. The only people who should be voting remotely are military stationed out of state and people hospitalized or with disabilities that physically prevent them from getting to a polling site.
It will never happen, but I also think that you are not a net taxpayer you shouldn't be allowed to cast a vote. I don't let the guy at the office who isn't chipping in for lunch have a say on where we're buying from, so why do we let people with no stake in the matter vote on how to spend everyone else's money?
That's not hard to reconcile. A homogeneous population with limited franchise of political power, with full rights otherwise for the rest of the population. Save if course for those who can't maintain good standing in a civilized society.
Everyone can have guns, everyone can conduct commerce, etc. Only landed families and veterans can vote, because everyone else has a conflict of interest against the securement of the future of the nation.
Top this with a formalized "Bill of Wrongs", a codified list of things that are not under any circumstances to be considered a right, and you have a society that has a decent chance to avoid the pitfalls we've fallen into the past century.